Do you need a value proposition before starting a project?
I'm a solo developer working on a classified ads app, which is getting no traction. Lately I'm looking into pivoting to something else, related to local commerce. But not sure what exactly - neither what specific product, nor which customer segment.
I thought that one way to move forward is to collect data for local businesses and organize them online. Data that is hard/impossible to find online. Working hours, services (e.g. hairdressers), menus (food places), products (small stores), etc. This is valuable to consumers, as I provide information that was previously not available. The promise is that some customer segment (e.g. healthy food stores) will gain traction, and then I'll focus on what value to provide to that segment, and charge money for it.
However, this will require quite some effort to gather the data, without a clear direction on how to make money. I know this is against the lean approach, where first I should talk with customers, validate, and then build. Or that I should focus on small features and iterate, to find product market fit. I worry that I'll waste my time without a clear goal ahead. I might be falling into the trap of building stuff because I enjoy it, while I should be using my time to spot specific unsolved problems and coming up with solutions.
Any sort of advice/comment appreciated.
How are you collecting the information? going to business to get it? or is it online just not easy to find. If it's not easy to find won't google just take your information and aggregate(steal) it and display it on their site. you could block google from crawling, but then you have no traffic source.
If you were going to go to small businesses, it might be better to ask them what they're pain points are.
Also most small stores don't list their products online, or their services and prices. The assumption is that they do want to list them online, but they don't have the resources or knowledge to do so. It's much easier to get them to give me their data and publish it for free, than for example, selling them an online store or booking platform.
Yes, it's the first thing you need.
What kind of value can you bring today for these stores (even for free that would give them an incentive to populate data) ?
Great way to frame the problem. I guess the key word is today. Telling them "give me your data to list you online" or "here's a link to manage your info online", sounds too vague to be convincing.
The assumption I made was that they don't have the means (money, knowledge) to get their info online. I'm not talking about US, UK, etc. where you have Yelp, Yext, Pointy, etc. So getting their info online for them is the value, which is provided for free.
I think your worries are correct, you will waste time as you're basically taking a stab in the dark to see what will work, your best approach is to instead do what you've already mentioned, get some form of validation on your idea and if it doesn't pass that validation, move on to finding a new idea.
That's my two cents anyway, good luck with whatever you decide to do
Thanks, indeed it's too vague. Iterating and moving on to new ideas is an art, which I haven't mastered yet. :)
Usually, I can find the working hours of most businesses online if they are registered with google. Menus for restaurants... there should be something on the market already
I think the idea to show data about what products small shops have is good. But I'm not sure if this is something doable with a reasonable amount of effort. I'd definitely go around and ask some shop owner what they think about it and how this could work. Otherwise, I wouldn't start on the implementation since you don't seem to know your customers (shop owners) and their problems. So the risk would be very high to build something and never gain traction.
Spot on - my initial thought was to get the products of small stores online. No doubt that provides value for consumers and stores. But as you said this is a huge effort. I either need to hire people to do it (visit stores, call), or develop some plug-and-play solution that integrates with so many different software/hardware (not easy).
So I thought to look at data that is easier to get and change less often - services, locations, menus - which however is not that novel information.